(sighs dramatically) oh goodness, i suppose i'll have to...!!! golly...!!!
i have so much more to say than what i wrote here but i'm trying to keep it succinct lol.
So, objectively, they're VERY similar characters. I think the main distinction between them is how far they're willing to go in pursuit of their shared ideals.
Manan's desire to eternally preserve her own youth/beauty is why she does the whole consciousness transfer thing, we know this.
And Jonas has a similar vocal fascination with those concepts, but his interest in them gets directed toward the cold sleep process instead!!
Their viewpoint difference here is interesting, because while Manan goes to like... reprehensible shady lengths to this end, Jonas is kind of passive? He's more about dwelling on the nostalgia of his own youth than actively trying to return to it. I think rather than youth itself, he's more interested in like... the concepts of his own past happiness/innocence he associates with them.
They both have. uh. objects of obsession??? (I don't want to say 'loves' because like... 1. I'm not doing that to poor Remnan and 2. we don't actually even know if Jonas's feelings towards Arya were mutual) who they pursued across space for who knows how long.
This is getting into theory territory, but based on Jonas as a character having so many allusions to Jason and the Argonauts, I'm inclined to believe that Arya's intended to be the Medea to Jonas's Jason, which would make his pursuit of her following whatever went down between them also unwanted- further paralleling Manan and Remnan.
Again, that's a big ol' theory, but it'd line up.
Of course, the big difference between them on that front is that Manan doesn't give up on Remnan, even after getting everything else she wants and becoming Kukrushka. But Jonas does give up on finding Arya.
There's also the difference in the way these two talk about/treat Arya and Remnan.
Manan makes it pretty clear that Remnan's thoughts/feelings/personhood (or anyone's, really) do not matter to her. She is pure selfish pursuit of her own desires.
Jonas is like... ignorant of other people's feelings towards what he says/does at times, and sometimes intentionally callous, but he's also a sappy romantic. In line with that, he notably cares (honestly a little too much lol) about peoples' impression of him, so I imagine he's the sort who would want to be loved back or at least admired by a partner.
Manan is all about doing whatever she wants to the detriment of everyone around her. Jonas is... the same lol, but to a much lesser extent because he still cares about people other than himself.
It's active maliciousness in pursuit of one's desires vs ignorance of how the actions you take in pursuit of them negatively affect others.
I think their differences when they're Gnosia reflect this too, actually. Gnosia!Jonas is super bloodthirsty and eager to eliminate humans. The Gnos brain rewiring literally appeals to him in every single way- from cyberization negating the concept of aging/degradation of the body/death infinitely more effectively than just being frozen, to the heroism aspect of it all.
Then you have Manan as Gnosia!SQ who, despite the Gnosia perspective of elimination/Gnos, would rather keep the humans she likes as fun toys for herself and extend their suffering.
I really like the event where we lose to Gnosia!Jonas and SQ, because we get to see this side by side.
i could probably say more about the dynamic between jonas & kukrushka in relation to all this too, but this post is already looooong so i'll stop here for now lol. i have spent too much time analyzing jonas for my own good. hope you enjoyed my thoughts :)
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